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Steve Jobs was known for his fanaticism for his own company Apple, which is why he was such a technology innovator and a genius. His authorized biography written by Walter Isaacson, shows that Jobs was angry with how Google supposedly stole certain aspects of the iOS mobile platform for Android operating system. According to Jobs’ biography,...
Google launched Google Instant in 2010 for saving its users time during search online. With Google Instant, users could get an automatic suggestion just as they type a search query, which Google claimed saved them two to five seconds per each search as there was no need to hit the “Enter” button in order to get the search results,...
A new rumour is circulating about a tablet, but this time not by Apple or Samsung, but by Google. The search engine has been trying everything it could to compete in different arenas, whether it be social networking through Google+ or mobile operating system through Android. Now it is coming out with Google Nexus tablet that is rumoured...
When a user does Google search he or she gets relevant ads from Google relevant to that search query. This is how Google delivers relevant ads to people and generate revenues for itself from advertisers. Google recently blogged about making ads better for everyone. Through this, Google suggested how advertisers can make safe ads which...
Google will invoke its new, unified privacy policy on March 1st and if you’re worried about potential privacy issues then now is the time to get your Google account all set before the switch is flicked.
Once the new privacy policy comes into affect, your browsing history will become available to all other Google products. That means that while your browsing history is currently hidden away from Google’s applications, that will all change come March 1st.
While this may not be an issue to many, some will raise the concern that this browsing data can potentially contain details that they may not wish to be shared. Sexual orientation, location, interests and just about anything else could be gleaned by thumbing through someone’s Google browsing history, and come March 1st it is all fair game for all of Google’s products and services.
If this sounds like something you might not be too keen on, there is a way to clear the browsing history right now, before Google opens it up to be plundered by Google’s ever-growing suite of applications and online products.
If you’re going to clear everything out now, you’ll need to:
Head on over to your Google account’s history page at www.google.com/history
Choose “Remove all Web History.”
Click “OK”
The best part of all this is that the selection you just made doesn’t only clear your browsing history, but it also pauses the collection of it. From now on, and until you tell Google otherwise, your browsing history will no-longer be saved and thus, it won’t be shared.
Of course, we’re all sharing our information with just about every service on the internet already, and whether the information Google has as part of your search history is really that important is a matter that will cause debate for some time to come. Google, Facebook and every other large online presence would rather we all shared our entire lives online, and so long as we get a service for free we’re perfectly happy to do so until a potential privacy issue crops up.
If you’re really that worried about privacy then it’s only a matter of time until the only way to be confident nothing is leaking out is to switch off your Wi-Fi, bolt the doors and close the windows. Sharing is becoming part and parcel of our digital lives, and turning of browsing history isn’t going to change any of that.
This might come as a surprise, but there are internet users in Pakistan who are not comfortable using any social networking site. A country where there are active bloggers with a strengthened voice to express their opinions, Pakistan is lagging behind in having a say when it comes to social networking platforms as less than a quarter of the internet users have joined any of the social networking sites.
There are many websites which are operating quite successfully from within Pakistan and have international reach too, but when considered and compared with the huge population mass of the country, it is a small figure. Even when compared with other neighbouring countries in South Asia, Pakistan lacks its presence on social media. According to a report, there are fewer than 20% internet users via mobile devices. This is interesting because mobile devices fare really well in terms of customer market and the telecom sector of Pakistan is one of the better ones.
There is a lot of Pakistani diaspora which has not been accounted for in this report and its survey, and they do make a large chuck of educated class in Pakistan, which is both well-informed and concerned for the country’s better future. But why there is such a little presence on one of the most effective platforms this world has seen is still a big question. This low level of social network penetration has to change real soon, because it is about time this happens.
Social networking sites
Facebook has just made a much-anticipated status update Wednesday:
“The Internet social network is going public eight years after its CEO Mark Zuckerberg started the service at Harvard University.”
This means anyone with the right amount of cash will be able to own part of a Silicon Valley icon that quickly transformed from dorm-room startup to cultural touchstone.
If its initial public offering of stock makes enough friends on Wall Street, Facebook will probably make its stock-market debut in three or four months as one of the world’s most valuable companies. Facebook, which is now based in Menlo Park, Calif., hopes to list its stock under the ticker symbol, “FB,” on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq Stock Market.
In its regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook Inc. indicated it hopes to raise $5 billion in its IPO. That would be the most for an Internet IPO since Google Inc. and its early backers raised $1.9 billion in 2004. The final amount will likely change as Facebook’s bankers gauge the investor demand.
Amid the buoyant optimism about Facebook’s prospects as a public company, some analysts see troubling parallels to the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, which turned into a devastating bust in the early 2000s. The biggest fear is that some investors will become so enamored with Facebook’s brand and brawn that the will try to buy the IPO share with little financial analysis or recognition of the risks.
The IPOs of Zynga and LinkedIn showed that success isn’t guaranteed even for profitable companies with huge followings. Zynga’s stock is currently trading just slightly above its IPO price. LinkedIn is considerably higher, but still far below the $122.70 record that it hit on its first trading day.
“It seems there’s so much excitement, innovation around Internet startups in Silicon Valley and yet a lot of these companies, have not performed well at all,” Kessler said. “The concern is the sustainability of the growth and profitability. It’s very, very difficult to prove those things out over a short period of time.”
Mark Zuckerberg, 27, has emerged as the latest in a lineage of Silicon Valley prodigies who are alternately hailed for pushing the world in new directions and reviled for overstepping their bounds. In Zuckerberg’s case, a lawsuit alleging that he stole the idea for Facebook from some Harvard classmates became the grist for a book and a movie that was nominated for an Academy Award last year.
According to a survey conducted by Security firm Check Point, Corporations Prefer iOS Over BlackBerry and Android. The research that surveyed 768 IT professionals from the U.S, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan demonstrates that Apple’s iOS is the preferred mobile platform, especially for security Purposes.
89% IT professionals, questioned have smartphones or tablets connected to their corporate networks but Apple iOS is the most common mobile platform used to connect in corporate environments. IOS accounts for 30% of the devices connected, followed by BlackBerry with its 29% and Android’s 21%. The Windows Mobil Phone still accounts for 18% of the total connected devices.
71% consider that the addition of mobile devices on the corporate networks contributed to increased security incidents. However, Google’s Android is regarded the less secure among the platforms. It is considered to introduce the greatest security risks, the answer came from 43% of those asked.
Google is working hard to overcome the security risks of Android in order to suit the needs of businesses. There’s even a Security Enhanced version of the platform, released by the NSA, that aims at solving some of the problems related to security. However, the corporate world still thinks it is less secure than Apple’s iOS which is also less secure than RIM’s BlackBerry OS.
VIA Checkpoint
App Store Analytics website Distimo has reported that the Google Android Market has breached the 400,000 applications barrier in a rise that has seen the total number of apps on the Market double since April 2011. In April of last year; the Market rose to have an approximate of 200,000 applications, with that figure rising to 300,000 in August 2011 taking four months to gain an additional 100,000 applications.
The Android Market contains applications made up from roughly 100,000 developers releasing an average of four applications each to make up the total number of applications available. Although Distimo are reporting that the Markets rate of growth has caught up to that of the Apple App Store, the absolute number of applications in the App Store is still higher than that of the Android Market, totaling approximately 543,000 if the 148apps metrics are to be believed.
As a market place, the iOS App Store reached the 200,000 available applications in twenty one months in comparison to the thirty one months Android took. However, it took Apple an additional eight months to hit the 300,000 count, which the Android Market place managed in four. The comparison however perhaps isn’t a fair one as it isn’t comparing apples with apples (no pun intended). It is a well known fact that Apple test and inspect all submitted applications to make sure it does exactly what it says; it does and contain any nasty surprises, whereas the Google model is somewhat more open, allowing for a faster submission time.
One trend which appears to be present across most mobile app stores at the moment is the consumer reluctance to pay for mobile software. Reports are indicating that approximately 68% of the applications within the Android Market are free of charge downloads which shows a rise of 8% since April 2011. Both market places have seen an insurgence of what is dubbed as freemium applications. Basically software which is free of charge to download but then requires an in-app purchase to unlock additional or premium content.
One interesting point to note is that well known development labs such as Rovio (creator of Angry Birds) and ZeptoLab (creators of Cut The Rope) have preferred to opt for the freemium model due to Android users reluctance to pay for apps, and also in an attempt to combat users not paying for paid apps. However, additional developers such as Epic Games and id Software have made a conscious decision to boycott bringing their software to the Android platform altogether due to the high piracy rate.
(via electronista)
Google holds location data as primarily important to its location service system. According to Android head, Andy Rubin, tracking location data is essential for Google, and more so because of the public protest against its attempts to collect Wi-Fi hotspot location data via its Street View cars.
Both Google as well as Skyhook use Wi-Fi hotspot data to triangulate a position of the smartphone and then the algorithms measure distance from Wi-Fi hotspots in the database to finally locate a person. Hence, location data seem to be a great business for these companies because this helps them to give location-based services such as target advertising. They are important to check-in applications like Foursquare or Facebook.
But the consumers look at it as immoral and consider it to be a breach of their privacy. There should be an option of maintaining privacy and a right to opt out of such data collection. So far, Android is the only operating system that permits this facility of opting out of any data being tracked.
Due to this collection of data about users, many governments have asked Google to reveal personal information from their database about people wanted by them. In majority of the cases, Google has complied with these requests and only in a few had it declined to report back what governments have asked for.
If one thinks that internet is a protected place when one is safe from hacks, spams and online stalkers, then Google itself is a big on it. Hence, there is no privacy on Google. You never know what information of your search or net surfing they have about you.
Android and Google are there looking at you
Social media promotion is at its peak these days with every webpage asking to either like them, share their content or follow them. Every webpage has a “Like” page these days which is affecting search-engine rankings. With the help of mining data from social networks like Twitter and Facebook, the world’s largest search engines are hoping to make the results more relevant for the users.
Google and Bing have now realized that results your friends and followers “liked” or tweeted could be more pertinent than any algorithm could ever come up with. At the moment, search results on Bing and Google are the regular results along with results from other social media websites, which are each marked with an indicator about who shared the link.
These annotations are supposed to mean a call for trust your social network. In the future, it is expected that social data is likely to be integrated in a more intuitive way where search engines could avoid being riddled with Facebook “Like” badges.
Facebook Like
